This year Mary MacKillop’s Feast Day coincided with National Homelessness Week. As a part of our Mary Mackillop Feast Celebrations we held a toiletry drive, collecting toiletry items for those experiencing homelessness. Staff and students were asked to donate items to this worthy cause. Thank you to all the staff and students for their generosity!!

PONYTAIL PROJECT FUNDRAISER

The Ponytail Project is a fundraising campaign to raise money for cancer.

Some of the Senior students, (Neave Keenan, Halle Bone and Charlotte May) had their ponytails cut this week for the Ponytail Project Fundraiser. The students have already raised over $1500 which is a great achievement. If you would still like to donate see the enclosed link.

https://www.ponytailproject.com.au/fundraisers/Joeys

A very special thank you to Mrs Vanessa Schofield for taking the time to cut and style the students hair for this very worthy cause.

THE SCHOOL BATHROOM PROJECT

 

Earlier in the year the SRC discussed ways they could increase mental health awareness within our school community. One of the ideas proposed was to turn the bathrooms into works of art and have inspirational quotes and messages. Both senior and junior students enjoyed being creative with this project.

(Images to be added from senior and junior toilets so far)

Book Week Dress Up/Yr 12 Favourite Teacher Dress Up

The students of Yr 12 chose their last mufti day to dress up as their Favourite Teacher. This was in conjunction with the Book Week celebrations. 

Some of the highlights of the parade.

Top 10 Tips for Dealing with Test and Examination Pressure

1. KNOW YOUR MATERIAL
   The more confident you are about the topic(s) in your test, the less stress you will feel come exam time.  Make sure you stay on top of your school work and homework throughout the term.  Follow up with your teacher, or another subject matter expert, if there are things you don’t understand, well before the exams.  Trying to understand new concepts the night before a test is very stressful.

1. PRACTISE
   Make sure you do practise papers if they are available, or practise questions.  This might include multiple choice, short answer or essay style questions.  Always study in the way you will be tested. Work out a plan of action so you know how long you are going to allocate to each question type, what question types you will start with and what you will do if you come across things you aren’t sure about. Learn more about this in the Active Studying unit.
   
   
2. FUEL YOUR BODY AND YOUR MIND
   In the days leading up to an exam make sure you get enough sleep.  Being tired makes it harder to concentrate and remember.  Fuel your body and mind by eating well and drinking plenty of water.  Learn more about this in the Lifestyle and Balance unit.

1. MANAGE THE PHYSICAL SIGNS OF STRESS
   Familiarise yourself with how your body feels when you are stressed.  Do you get headaches? Tension in your neck or shoulders? Does your heart race faster?  What happens to your breathing?  Whenever you feel these effects, quickly start some relaxation exercises.  A good one to try during an exam is to breathe in deeply for 4 seconds, hold for 7 seconds and breathe out for 8 seconds.  Do this a few times to calm yourself down and allow yourself to refocus. Learn more about this in the Managing Stress unit.
   
   
2. BE PREPARED ON THE DAY
   Make sure you have packed or prepared everything you need for the test the night before.  Have a plan for how you are going to get to school on time - including a back-up plan if necessary.  Eat a nutritious breakfast and make sure you are hydrated. Learn more about this in the Test-Taking Techniques unit.
   
   
3. VISUALISE
   Use visualisation techniques to help reduce your stress on the day.  Every day in the weeks prior to the exam, last thing at night and first thing in the morning, visualise yourself calmly walking into the exam room, preparing your equipment, reviewing and completing your exam paper and feeling good about how you did.  Learn more about this in the Managing Stress unit.
   
   
4. INVOLVE YOUR PARENTS IN YOUR SCHOOLWORK
   Throughout the term talk to your parents about what you are studying.  Show them your bookwork and homework.  The more your parents understand about what you are doing and how you are going along the way, the better they are able to manage their expectations. They may also be able to help you study by testing you on what you are learning.
   
   
5. TALK TO YOUR PARENTS ABOUT REALISTIC GOALS
   Keep talking to your parents about what you want to achieve, in individual subjects, at school overall and in other aspects of your life.  Focus more on the learning and developing skills instead of just marks. Involve them in helping you to identify where to concentrate the most effort to achieve your goals.  Learn more about this in the Goal Setting unit.
   
   
6. UNDERSTAND EXPECTATIONS
   Many students feel like they are not meeting their parents’ expectations.  Often this is a result of poor communication about expectations by both parties. Assessment and reporting systems also change over time and are different in different schools and systems. Making sure your parents really understand what your report means may help them to understand what you are actually achieving.  Your school can assist you to explain these to your parents if need be and most schools provide booklets of explanation.  Often students are achieving, but reporting structures may not clearly represent this to parents.
   
   
7. ASK FOR HELP

The most important way to deal with stress is by talking to people and asking for help. Don’t try and go it alone. Your school, teachers, parents and friends are your support structure so keep lines of communication open (that means talk to them!) and let everyone know how you are feeling and what help you need.

You can learn more about how to deal with examination pressure in the Managing Stress and Test-Taking Techniques units at www.studyskillshandbook.com.au

Lawrie Burns, Pastoral Support Worker

I have been working as a chaplain at St Joseph’s since the beginning of 2020, a period of time that has seen fires, floods, and pandemic force so many changes on the way we interact as community.

In my role at Joey’s, I am keen to provide support across the entire school community, whether that it is working in small groups, or individual support for students, staff or families. My days of work are every Monday and Tuesday. 

I offer the following programs and support. Please contact me through the school if you require support in any of the areas listed below. Please note that this list is by no means exhaustive:

National Health & Physical Education & RUOK Day

We celebrated National HPE and RUOK Day on Thursday 7th September. Year 7 students impressed the PDHPE teachers with their excellent proposals for lunchtime club ideas for Term 4. It was wonderful to see the Year 7 students collaborating, problem solving and working together to create a poster board to promote their club. 

Congratulations to the winning clubs:

Netflix- Tahlia Tanevski, Isabella Duley, Brianna King-Burnham 

Art for a Cause- Amy Jedrzejczak, Claire-Rose James, Ebony McCloy

Oz Taggers- Pacey Moylan, Aaron Aji, Chrsitian Oanea & Curtis McWilliams

Hopefully we can get these clubs up and running next term!

It was great to see so many students being active throughout the day and participating in additional sports and wellbeing activities such as Table Tennis, Basketball, Frisbee Golf, Yoga, boxing and Oztag. We thank Olivia and Jason from SAVVY Fitness, Mrs Lowe and the PDHPE staff for making the day a success.

Our 2022 Beep Test Champions were Lochie Haining and Grace Pomery. A big shout out to Mr Sutton who gave them both a run for their money!

It’s not always easy to keep the conversation going when someone says they’re not OK, but it could change a life. Check out the interactive conversation roleplay video to help you learn what to say after R U OK? https://www.ruok.org.au/how-to-ask

Naplan Results

Were posted home last week. As always these results are just a snapshot of the performance of students in Yrs 7 and 9 in a particular test on a particular day. Staff will use the data provided from Naplan to provide a better understanding of the current level of performance of each student and to develop strategies to assist in further developing the capacity of these students in each of the areas that were tested.

Yr 11 Exams

Yr 11 Yearly exams will take place  from Thursday Week 9 to the end of term. The final exam schedule has been distributed to students via email. Yr 11 students will have flexible attendance at school during the exam period. Yr 10 students doing Yr 11 Pathways courses are entitled to one day of flexible attendance prior to their exam. To facilitate this pathways students need to complete the Exam Preparation application form that was shared via email this week before the beginning on Week 9.

Best wishes to all students sitting exams. 

Subject Selections 2023

Subject selections for Yrs 9-11 2023 have now closed. In coming weeks we will look at finalising classes and providing students with their allocated classes for 2023. I would like to thank the students and their parents/carers for the mature approach that has been displayed in completing this process.

Ignite Program

Students involved in the Ignite program have been busy completing their course work and working on their Independent Research Projects (IRP) in recent weeks. This year we have adopted a Critical Thinking program that students are working through. The first unit has been about Understanding Critical Thinking looking at topics such as:

• defining critical Thinking
• understanding the dispositions of critical thinking
• appreciating the role of critical thinking in developing understanding of content
• barriers to critical thinking

Next term we will be working through a unit titled Predicting the Future where students will look at concepts such as:

• the difference between guessing, possibility, and probability as methods of predicting the future
• methods used through human history to predict future events in a wide range of contexts
• the evolution and refinement of explanatory models over time and the impact it has on individuals and society

Students are also busy working on their IRP’s. Students are completing projects on a range of areas such as marine biology, religion, species extinction, rare medical conditions, mental health and dark energy to name a few. We look forward to seeing their finished projects at the end of Term 4.

We run Basketball competitions for children U12, U14, U16 years.

Shellharbour City Stadium

Croome Road, Albion Park Rail

Is taking registration for

U12, U14, U16

mixed basketball competitions

Call 42 573 468